cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/31454550

The president’s stated intention to pardon Tina Peters, jailed for tampering with election machines in 2020, has set off a legal fight over the extent of Mr. Trump’s pardon powers.

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Mr. Ticktin argued that Mr. Trump has the power to free Ms. Peters under an untested legal theory that the Constitution’s language allowing the president to pardon people for offenses “against the United States” applied not just to federal crimes but also to state-level charges.

“The President of the United States has the power to grant a pardon in any of the states of the United States,” Mr. Ticktin wrote in a letter to Mr. Trump last week that portrayed Ms. Peters as a political prisoner who could be a witness to investigations into the false claims that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.

Legal scholars and Colorado officials were incredulous. They said the notion that the president could intervene in state courts clashed with the plain language of the Constitution, as well as its fundamental principles of federalism and states’ rights.